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INNER CIRCLE SERIES 


Christ’s 
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HERMON D. JENKINS, D.D. 

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OF “THE interior.” 

AUTHOR OF “ PRESBYTERIANISM,” “A CENTENNIAL 
HISTORY,” “PRESBYTERIANISM IN THE 
LOUISIANA PURCHASE,” “EUROPEAN 
SKETCHES,” ETC. 


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1904 

THE WINONA PUBLISHING COMPANY 

CHICAGO, ILL. WINONA LAKE, IND. 


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LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

JUN 6 1904 

Copyright Entry 

'/Mfll/ 33, 

CLASST XXo. No. 

fry f fro 

'COPY B 



COPYRIGHT, 1904 
BY 

THE WINONA PUBLISHING COMPANY 





Christ’s Boys and Girls 

———^—— 


The Text.— And the streets of., the city 
shall be full of boys and girls, playing in 
the streets thereof.—Zechariah 8: 5. 

I thank Thee, Father, Lord of heaven 
and earth, that Thou hast hid these things 
from the wise and prudent, and hast 
revealed them unto babes.—Luke 10:21. 

These are but two of the many pas¬ 
sages which might be selected from 
both Old and New Testaments to show 
the sympathy of good men in all ages 
with the natural joys and spiritual 
intuitions of youth. Not that even 
the best men have equally realized 
what the ancient prophet and the 
Messiah here expressed. Our Puritan 
forefathers, for example, did not as a 
class appreciate the relation of the 
Bible to life in its first two decades; 
but there were exceptions even to their 
austerity, and their biographies reveal 
to us some very delightful pictures of 
kindly Christian homes. As a rule the 
7 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


grave problems with which they had to 
deal naturally led them to take the 
most serious views of duty, since duty 
came to them so often as the 

“Stern daughter of the voice of God.” 

But even if they often lost sight of 
the more cheerful aspects of religion, 
and were consequently unable to freely 
interpret the gospel into terms of 
youth, the truth remained deeply 
imbedded in the Word. The Bible has 
always had a tender and a loving 
regard for boys and girls, for adoles¬ 
cence and youth, in their natural and 
playful propensities. 

It is delightful to see how much 
happiness Zechariah had in the vision 
of a recovered, restored and rejuve¬ 
nated Jerusalem whose blest security 
and prosperity should be borne witness 
to by the abundant presence of youth¬ 
ful companions in the streets. The 
very temple of Jehovah seems not to 
8 




CHRIST'S BOYS AND GIRLS 


have occupied so prominent a place in 
the visions of the seer as this youthful 
life which was bright with smiles and 
exuberant with laughter. Doubtless 
these young people had their share in 
the songs which their elders lifted up 
about the reconstructed altar; and 
they, too, would bow with their parents 
when prayers were offered in the syna¬ 
gogue; but whatever their religious 
exercises their religion did not forbid 
or lessen the joys appropriate to their 
years. The man of God was glad to 
know that the happiest children in the 
world were the children who were 
under Jehovah’s immediate care. He 
stood smiling by. He was not eager 
to forbid their sport or reprove their 
loud halloo. 

Many of the most charming chapters 
of the Bible are those in which the life 
and achievements of youth are pre¬ 
sented. Although by dint of many 
hard knocks David was developed into 
9 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


a poet and a king, the real founder of 
Israel’s devotional literature and mili¬ 
tary empire, he is most engaging to us 
in his youth. God loved him when as 
a lad he met a lion and a bear coming 
out of the wood and slew them single- 
handed. It was as a youth he faced 
Goliath. It was as a youth he refused 
to lift a hand against that tyrannous 
king who thirsted for his blood. It 
was as a youth he formed an attach¬ 
ment to Jonathan, which constitutes 
one of the most beautiful stories in any 
literature. After he becomes a man 
of middle life and matured powers he 
almost fades from the page of Holy 
Writ. 

In the same way we may recall that 
no one knows Moses’ sepulchre, but we 
all know his cradle. It was not Joseph 
on the throne of Egypt who was most 
attractive to the sacred historian, but 
Joseph in his father’s house, Joseph a 
boy slave, pure notwithstanding all the 
10 




CHRIST’S BOYS AND GIRLS 


allurements and temptations of a disso¬ 
lute court. It was to Samuel, the 
child ministering at the altar, that 
Jehovah revealed the coming events in 
the history of the nation. No other 
book claiming so high and divine an 
origin makes so much of childhood as 
does the Bible. 

Yet it is only when we turn to the 
life of Jesus that we fully realize this. 
The gospel story opens with pictures 
of children. The Saviour first appears 
in the temple as a child intent upon 
the service of Jehovah. It is the 
youngest of His disciples who, later, 
leans upon His breast at supper. He 
makes a little child the symbol of those 
graces which are most acceptable in the 
sight of heaven. It is a youthful ruler 
that He “loves,” and a child that He 
takes into His arms with tender bene¬ 
diction. He illustrates spiritual reali¬ 
ties by reference to the plays of 
children. Not only did He make the 
11 


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CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


child in “its modest stillness and 
humility” to stand higher than the 
blustering man, but He did not hesi¬ 
tate, when His enemies twitted Him 
upon the youth and insignificance of 
His converts, to thank God that a 
child could oft times understand things 
hidden from men of “a mature mind.” 
As is seen in the second of the two 
verses which jointly constitute our 
text, Jesus boldly declared that those 
whom the philosophers and wise men 
sneered at as “babes and sucklings” 
had, by virtue of a spiritual intuition, 
oft times a profounder knowledge of 
divine truths than learned men. To 
the famous metaphysician and scientist 
the Power behind the visible world 
may be still “The Unknown God,” but 
to millions of little children who will 
fold their palms upon the coverlets of 
their beds to-night, He is the Heavenly 
Father, the most real Being of the 
universe. More than one pastor, called 
12 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


upon to “examine” some timid little 
one upon the subject of personal relig¬ 
ion, has been compelled to acknowledge 
the situations ought to be reversed. 
He has found that the child was 
the seer, the child was the prophet, 
the child was the evangelist; and he 
has whispered to himself as did Words¬ 
worth in a situation somewhat similar: 

“Dear child! dear girl! that walkest with 
us here, 

If thou appearest untouched by solemn 
thought, 

Thy nature is not therefore less divine: 

Thou liest in Abraham’s bosom all the 
year; 

And worshippest at the temple’s inner 
shrine, 

God being with thee when we knew it 
not.” 

But on the other hand we must not 
forget that if the Bible is tender 
toward children, children are drawn 
toward the Bible. They are always 
capable of appreciating what is most 
13 




CHRIST’S BOYS AND GIRLS 


vital in the Word of God when it is 
presented to them in the right spirit. 
It is a serious mistake to think that a 
child loves Mother Goose better than 
Saint John. It is not necessary to 
exaggerate the simple fact and to 
declare that children “cry” for the 
Bible; but parents need to he on their 
guard against underestimating a child’s 
capacity for spiritual instruction. 
Christians of many years’ religious 
experience, looking back, can seldom 
discover a time when they did not love 
the Bible, when they did not feel for 
the Bible a reverence and an affection 
very different from that called out by 
any other book. Long before they 
could understand the gravest problems 
of duty and responsibility the Bible 
possessed for them a conscious charm. 
There was something in their souls 
which responded to its teachings as 
quickly as April violets respond to 
April suns. There was a fascination 
14 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


in its great revelations concerning crea¬ 
tion and redemption from which they 
could not, from which they would not, 
escape. There was a sweetness in its 
biographies of which they were never 
weary. Jack-the-Giant-Killer and Cin¬ 
derella were soon outgrown; hut not 
so with Moses, not so with Ruth, not 
so with the Babe of Bethlehem. 
Happy the boy or girl who has been 
introduced to this goodly fellowship 
before all the bloom was brushed from 
the child’s spiritual nature. And 
happy the “mature mind” which can 
see in this attitude of the child toward 
the Bible and the truths of the Bible 
the most precious witnessing to inspi¬ 
ration. There is a certain class of 
observers and writers who can find in 
“youthful piety” only something weak, 
only something to excite a jest, only 
something to be apologized for and 
deprecated. But Jesus saw in youth¬ 
ful piety something for which to give 
15 





CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


thanks to God Allwise. It was a 
testimony that He craved. It was far 
dearer to Him to be approved by the 
boys and girls He met in the market 
place and in the open fields than to be 
endorsed by proud and selfish and 
cynical men in theological schools and 
royal palaces. We say of this or that 
kindly soul, “He is a good man; chil¬ 
dren love him and he loves children.” 
We may say with equal truthfulness 
and consistency, “It is God’s book. 
It leans toward children and children 
love it.” 

It is therefore not the reproach of 
the gospel, but its glory, that most men 
and women. who know Christ at all 
become His followers when boys or 
girls. The newspapers have been 
repeating with great gusto of late the 
reported saying of some minister that 
“Most persons who become Christians 
do so during their giggling and gum- 
chewing period.” State the fact as 
16 




CHRIST’S BOYS AND GIRLS 


contemptuously as you will, Jesus 
gloried in the fact that most of His 
converts were converted in their youth. 
Early piety is the rule, not the excep¬ 
tion, in the Christian church. If it 
were not so it would not be divine. 
We have no clearer thinker, no saner 
reasoner to-day than was Jesus Christ; 
and it was to Him a supreme joy that 
His message appealed triumphantly to 
the human soul before it was over¬ 
grown with selfish interests or all its 
generous instincts were drowned out 
by a flood of worldly cares. He never 
once boasted that His mission approved 
itself to “men of clear, cold intellect.” 
He never published in the papers that 
fifty new disciples had joined Him— 
“three-fourths of them adults!” He 
never compassed heaven and earth to 
make one proselyte of accepted social 
standing and acknowledged intellect¬ 
ual leadship; but He warned the 
grown-up and the learned and the 
17 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


cultured, that it were better for a man 
to have a mill-stone about his neck and 
to be cast into the sea than to give 
occasion to trustful children, by sneers, 
innuendoes or flippant speech concern¬ 
ing their “early piety,” to fall away 
from Him. 

But that which should be deeply 
impressed upon our minds by a study 
of this theme, whether we be parents 
or children, is that youth is the period 
in which decisions are naturally made. 

One of the sorrowful experiences of 
every pastor is to encounter the ques¬ 
tion as to “the age at which children 
should be taught to mind.” The 
observant minister, when such an 
enquiry is addressed to him, suspects 
very justly that the particular child 
whose conduct has prompted the 
appeal is already past the period of 
useful discipline. The child has often 
decided the gravest questions of con¬ 
duct before the parent has waked to 
18 





CHRIST'S BOYS AND GIRLS 


the fact that there are problems to be 
presented. Most children who are lost 
are lost before the fathers or mothers 
have learned to think of them as 
* 1 morally responsible. ’ ’ 

There never was, I suppose, an age 
in which there was so much “child 
study” as to-day, and such gross 
ignorance of the child. I have a dozen 
or so of volumes upon my book¬ 
shelves, all published within the past 
three or four years, upon The Child 
and Pedagogy, and the Psychology of 
Adolescence, most of which appear to 
have been written by authors who have 
handled only “Babes from Toy-land.” 

I have yet to find in one of them a 
serious and reverent study of that 
which chiefly distinguishes the child 
from the adult, and that is the tender 
conscience and clear spiritual intuition 
and resolute moral nature of the child. 
The most characteristic element of 
childhood is the moral; and the writ- 
19 




CHRIST'S BOYS AND GIRLS 


ers of to-day, for the larger part, deal 
with the child as though it were a ball 
of putty. The impression seems to be 
that the child is a mere “giggling and 
gum-chewing” animal, without brain, 
without purpose, without ethical force 
or moral volition. We have grave 
studies of the “Play of Children” and 
the “Folklore of Children,” but if 
there has been published of late one 
serious and reverent study of the 
child’s moral consciousness and deep 
religious nature it has not reached my 
well-stocked table. And yet that is 
just what gives to childhood its 
supreme importance in the eye of 
prophet and Christ. 

It is this laughing, merry, light¬ 
hearted period which is the period of 
vital decisions. It is this dimpled girl 
with a sparkling eye and a musical 
voice and a dancing step, who never 
talks to her mother or her Sunday- 
school teacher about religion, who 
20 




CHRIST’S BOYS AND GIRLS 


never forgets religion. Many a night 
her pillow is wet with tears as she 
recalls the mistakes, the faults, the 
sins of the day. The hasty word, the 
spiteful rejoinder, the deceitful glance 
lie heavy upon the youthful conscience 
and prompt the heart-breaking confes¬ 
sions and prayers which she pours out 
“when none but God can hear.” 
Youth is not a period of drifting; it is 
a period of decisions, and many a child 
of ten is giving to the moral problems 
of life more thought than most parents 
at fifty. And the child that seems as 
volatile as thistle-down can not only 
make a decision but stand to it like 
Casabianca on “the burning deck,” 
though it cost a life. 

If there is any one toward whom my 
heart melts with inexpressible tender¬ 
ness, it is the boy who is forever 
“studied” but never understood. He 
of all God’s creatures does not “wear 
his heart upon his sleeve.” Beneath 
21 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


all his diffidence there lies a seriousness 
which is, to the wise, the real explana¬ 
tion of his apparent neglect of religion. 
The fact is that religion is with him 
so real, and so vital, and so pregnant, 
that he cannot talk about it with 
everybody. He avoids the subject, 
not because his conscience is callous, 
but because it is abnormally sensitive. 
Like the psalmist, he is “so troubled” 
that he cannot speak. As a rule no 
one understands him less than his 
father—unless it be his Sunday-school 
teacher, or, alas, his pastor. His 
“don’t-care” manner is assumed to 
cover a restless mind, a perplexed 
judgment and a disturbed conscience. 
He is painfully conscious of the imma¬ 
turity of his intellect; but no one has 
ever understood him better than the 
poet who wrote: 

“The thoughts of youth are long, long 

thoughts.” 

He is lonesome in the midst of a 
22 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


crowd; despondent in the center of 
hilarity, and most burdened when sup¬ 
posedly most free from care. For the 
first time he is face to face with the 
great problems of duty and destiny; 
and he knows it. He realizes it. He 
is fighting his battles, but fighting 
them all alone. His parents assert, 
when the pastor desires to speak to 
him of confessing Christ, “He is too 
young to think about such things 
yet.” But God knows he thinks 
about little else in the waking hours 
upon his couch. He does not know 
how to approach his dearest friend 
regarding that which lies nearest to 
his heart; and his parents still regard 
him as “our little boy.” But mean¬ 
while he has “a great fight of afflic¬ 
tions,” to endure which an angel might 
dread to encounter, and there is, so 
far as his earthly relations are con¬ 
cerned, “no eye to pity and no arm to 
save.” “He is too young to think of 
23 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


joining the church yet,” says the com¬ 
placent father. “It will be time 
enough by and by,” says the fond 
mother. And the boy is left strug¬ 
gling against a mighty, adverse current 
all alone because he is “only a boy.” 
His father is deep in his paper when 
not at the office, and his mother is 
absorbed in social functions when not 
worrying about her servants; and 
before anybody but himself has given 
a thought to him as other than a child 
he has become a man, but a lost man! 
No one better understood the possibil¬ 
ities of youth than he who wrote 

“There are gains for all our losses 
And a balm for every pain,” 

but when youth departs 

“It takes something from our hearts 
We shall never see again.” 

In his marvelous and mournful auto¬ 
biography John Stuart Mill tells us 
of this critical period in his own youth, 
24 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


when the absence of the right counsel 
at the right time made of him a 
skeptic when he might have been a 
believer. 

But if youth is preeminently the 
time of moral decisions, it is, accord¬ 
ing to the words of Jesus, a period 
favorable to wise, moral decisions. 

This could not be if religion were 
primarily a matter of philosophical 
deduction or logical acumen. If relig¬ 
ion were something chiefly of the intel¬ 
lect it would need for its rational 
acceptance surely the gravest consider¬ 
ation of a mature mind. But, accord¬ 
ing to the Word of God, religion is 
not more a matter of logical under¬ 
standing than it is of spiritual intui¬ 
tion. The youthful heart has its own 
canons of judgment, and upon their 
findings Jesus set the stamp of His 
divine approval. For my part I am 
weary of this continued talking up to 
the thinking man and down to the 
25 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


feeling child. Wordsworth was wiser 
than this when he wrote that 

“Heaven lies about us in our infancy,” 

and Hazlitt when he said that “To be 
young is to he as one of the immor¬ 
tals.” The father who is drumming 
with his fingers upon the arm of his 
chair, seeking to decide whether the 
policy is justifiable which he has half de¬ 
termined to carry out in his office, dare 
not leave the final decision to the fair¬ 
haired girl playing at his feet, because 
he knows that the child in questions 
of duty is nearer heaven than he is. 
The fashionable mother who takes 
pains to conceal from her adolescent 
daughter her “innocent flirtations” 
with her husband’s married friends, 
realizes that the daughter’s moral dis¬ 
cernment is clearer and cleaner than 
her own. The “practical statesmen,” 
who, after eighty years of shrewd polit¬ 
ical compromises, led the nation into 
26 




CHRIST’S BOYS AND GIRLS 


Armageddon, into the very jaws of 
Death, into the very mouth of Hell, out 
of which the twenty-year-old boys of 
the nation had to fight a way to free¬ 
dom, may have statues erected to them 
in the Hall of Fame; but if the govern¬ 
ment of the republic had been left to 
the average Sunday-school class it 
would have been more moral and 
diviner, and could not have been more 
disastrous. The fact is, that there is 
more true wisdom in the moral intui¬ 
tions of an unsullied, unperverted, 
unselfish childhood than in all the 
cunning trimming and plausible sub¬ 
terfuges and self-deceiving humbug- 
gery of later life. And if a child 
“decides the most momentous problem 
of life before its judgment is ripe” it 
is because the value of that decision 
rests upon its moral rather than upon 
its logical premises. 

It is true beyond controversy that 
“most of those who join the church 
27 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


join before they are twenty-one, and 
few, if any, after they are twenty- 
three.” But the reason is not because 
the later judgment is more sound; it 
is because the earlier morals are more 
correct. Those statistically inclined tell 
us that “ninety percent, of all the mem¬ 
bers of evangelical churches have united 
with those churches before they were 
twenty-three.” I should have put the 
percentage much higher. It has 
always been high. Some years since I 
ascertained by a very careful personal 
investigation of hundreds of cases that 
the fathers and mothers of the present 
generation joined the church at the 
average age of seventeen, while the 
young people of the present generation 
at their first communion average six¬ 
teen. Yet the oldest member of my 
church of several hundred communi¬ 
cants had united with the church at a 
younger age than had any of her chil¬ 
dren or grandchildren. People are not 
28 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


“joining the church much younger 
than they used to do,” as any one may 
discover who chooses to investigate the 
matter adequately. The vast majority 
of Christian people have always become 
Christian in childhood and youth. 
Whether permitted to approach the 
communion table or not, they came to 
Christ early, and he who would dis¬ 
courage that now must oppose the 
experience of the church and the 
express approval of the Master. Even 
the heathen poet Horace, when he 
wrote upon the gravest moral problems 
connected with the state, addressed 
his appeal Pueris Virginibusque , “To 
the Boys and Girls” of Rome, be¬ 
cause he recognized that their con¬ 
sciences were more alert and their 
moral natures less perverted and their 
ethical judgments more sure than the 
consciences of their elders. Many a 
man of sixty would give all the mate¬ 
rial accumulations of his life could he 
29 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


approach the question of religion 
to-day under conditions as favorable to 
a wise decision as they were when he 
was sixteen. He cannot restore, much 
as he would desire to do so, the condi¬ 
tions of the past. He has fed his soul 
on doubts for forty years; he has 
indulged his appetites; he has sacri¬ 
ficed veracity to worldly interests. Is 
it any wonder that he says with Hood, 
as he looks the facts squarely in the 
face: 

“I’m farther off from heaven to-day 
Than when I was a boy.” 

The church is not apologizing for the 
fact, but glories in it, that “most of 
those who join its ranks, join before 
they are twenty-one,” especially if 
they are fitted to become leaders. 

It was in this period, between boy¬ 
hood and manhood, “where brook and 
river meet,” that Jonathan Edwards 
wrote the series of “Resolutions” look¬ 
ing toward a consecrated service, 
30 




CHRISTS HOYS AND GIRLS 


which is considered the finest outline 
of a holy life ever drawn. Dr. Isaac 
Watts was only nine years old when he 
made the choice that was never 
reversed. Matthew Henry was a pro¬ 
fessed Christian at eleven, and Robert 
Hall, the greatest of English preach¬ 
ers of the past century, at twelve. 
Dr. John Hall united with the church 
at fourteen and Dr. A. J. Gordon, the 
eminent revivalist of Boston, at six¬ 
teen. Among the late ministers of 
Chicago, Dr. John L. Withrow united 
with the church at thirteen and Dr. 
Simon J. McPherson at fourteen. 
President Thwing, of Adelbert Col¬ 
lege, addressed a letter to each of the 
members of the Board of Foreign Mis¬ 
sions upon the subject of child conver¬ 
sion and received answers from one 
hundred and forty-nine, every one of 
whom was a prominent spiritual force 
in his community. One hundred and 
five of them had united with the 
31 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


church under eighteen years of age. 
All but thirty had joined before they 
were twenty. The greatly useful men 
in Christ’s kingdom will never be the 
“waiters.” The leaders in Christ’s 
army almost invariably begin their 
service as youths or adolescents. 

But that which should never be for¬ 
gotten is that while youth is a time 
peculiarly favorable to a wise decision 
it is also a time when one may make a 
fatally unwise decision. Is it true 
that “almost nobody joins the church 
after he is twenty-three?” Quite true. 
But it is equally true that almost 
nobody becomes a drunkard after he is 
twenty-three. We have heard a great 
many sneers at, and not a few apolo¬ 
gies for, “infant piety,” as if it were 
something due to the weakness of 
immaturity. But what shall we say 
of infant depravity? Men and women 
do not choose virtue any earlier than 
they choose sin. Remember that. I 
32 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


have heard a groat many prayers from 
the Lord’s dear saints of all ages; but 
the sweetest prayer I ever heard was 
offered by a little five-year-old girl in 
the infant class of a mission school. I 
have heard far too much profanity, in 
the army, upon the sea, in cattle 
ranches and in mining towns; but the 
most blood-curdling curses I ever 
heard, I heard uttered by a five-year- 
old street Arab. If “early piety” is 
“abnormal,” what of early vice? The 
judge who was called upon to receive 
the plea of the three murderers in Chi¬ 
cago who recently confessed to half a 
dozen bloody crimes, addressed them 
as “boys”, and that is what they 
were. Although the world was aghast 
at their career as thugs, they were 
scarcely out of school. Some years 
since, in paying a visit to one of our 
over-crowded penitentiaries, the first 
thing which struck me was that it was 
a vast aggregation of lads and young 
33 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


men. Do you know that of the 82,329 
prisoners in the United States at the 
last report, nearly one-half were under 
thirty, one-third were under twenty- 
five and one-eighth were under twenty? 
These were not “first offenders,” you 
will see, hut hardened criminals who 
could no longer be permitted to go at 
large as a menace to society. France 
has 4,718 boy criminals and 1,063 girl 
criminals between twelve and sixteen 
years of age. Out of 26,000 arrests in 
Paris in a single year, 16,000 were 
under twenty years of age. Gangs of 
young hoodlums infest all the purlieus 
of our American cities; and a few 
years since at a summer resort by the 
lakes, I found an entire “boy choir,” 
composed of boys from respectable 
families, gathered about the gambling 
tables which were set out for them by 
an obliging proprietor. One of our 
daily papers recently contained a letter 
from a Chicago bar-tender, who said 
34 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


that the thing which most impressed 
him about “the trade” to-day was that 
it appealed to and secured “a much 
younger class of patrons” than when 
he began to sell liquors a score of years 
since. I have known a good many 
hoys and girls withheld from the 
church because they were “too young,” 
but I never knew a saloon to hold 
them out on account of their years. 
We may as well face the solemn fact 
that the choice offered our boys and 
girls is not between “early piety” and 
“the religion of a mature mind,” but 
between early piety and early sin. 
The middle years are not going to be 
spent in indecision. Esau and Jacob 
were twin brothers. The one chose 
the religion of his fathers and the other 
the wild, turbulent life of Moab’s 
hordes. But one made his choice 
quite as early as the other. The boy 
who does not go into the church early 
is simply going out of it early. The 
35 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


decision will be made long before man¬ 
hood is reached. It will be made 
before the powers and faculties are a 
whit more mature than they are now. 
It cannot be put off. It never has 
been. He who discourages youthful 
religion only encourages youthful irre- 
ligion. That is all there is to it. 

And this brings the matter directly 
home to parents. There can be no 
doubt that the opposition which many 
parents have to an early confession of 
Christ upon the part of their children 
is due to a false pride. It is not that 
they, as adult Christians, deplore their 
own youthful decisions. They do not. 
It was Esau who in his later life 
sought vainly and “with tears” a 
reversal of his adolescent folly. He 
chose godless companions, and he lived 
to bitterly rue it. It brought sorrow 
to his mother’s heart and a cloud to 
his father’s brow and a sense of shame 
to his own soul. But Jacob who, with 
36 




CHRIST’S BOYS AND GIRLS 


all his faults, longed to stand in the 
line of the world’s redemptive agents; 
and when he lay dying, older than a 
century, he lifted up his voice in 
thanksgiving for his early resolve to 
follow his father’s God. It is not 
because young Christians are more 
likely to ‘ 4 turn back” than those who 
are converted when “more mature.” 
The lapses are as many from adult 
conversions as from youthful piety, if 
not more; and every pastor knows it. 
It is not Timothy but Simon Magus 
who is likely to deny his Lord and dis¬ 
grace the church. 

But in young Christians there will 
be, of course, petty blemishes and 
minor inconsistencies; and parents are 
foolishly, wickedly sensitive to the 
criticisms that may be evoked. What 
the boys * and girls need, what the 
youths of both sexes need in this form¬ 
ative period, is a sense of responsibility 
together with the consciousness of 
87 




CHRIST’S BOYS AND GIRLS 


divine shepherding and the comfort of 
sacred sacraments. The Lord’s Sup¬ 
per was not given simply for the aged 
saint who is dying, but for the youth¬ 
ful disciple who must live. Chas. H. 
Spurgeon, whose church membership 
ran up into the thousands, said that he 
never found cause to discipline a 
member who had been admitted to the 
church in youth. May God forgive 
the parents who deprive their children 
of these safeguards out of fear that 
youthful Christians may commit youth¬ 
ful indiscretions. Surely if the Master 
will not quench the lamp that is but 
dimly smoking, it is not for our doubts 
or pride to put it out. If the Lord, be¬ 
fore whom all must stand at last, will 
not break the reed already bruised and 
trembling, it ill becomes a parent to 
deny his child the privilege of seeking 
refuge in a Saviour’s mighty grace. 

At each returning communion sea¬ 
son the church repeats its invitation 
38 




CHRIST’S BOYS AND GIRLS 


and opens its doors to the boys and 
girls who would come to the arms of 
the loving Lord. The church needs 
the inspiration of their presence as 
much as they need the restraining 
power of its life. All truths are not 
revealed to the mature mind any more 
than they are all made known to the 
youthful heart. To do the work 
before it the church needs budding 
enthusiasm as truly as it needs ripe 
judgment. Perhaps the Master does 
not find it harder to bear with the 
levity of youth than with the melan¬ 
choly of age. If the Holy Spirit grants 
to old men dreams it grants to young 
men visions, because the church needs 
both. And by the blessing of God not 
less than fifty thousand boys and girls, 
lads and misses, young men and maid¬ 
ens make their first confession of their 
Saviour at the communion table of our 
denomination every year. These con¬ 
stitute, as they grow up and take their 
39 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


places in its various activities, the joy, 
the strength, the glory of the church. 
The ministers, the elders, the Sunday- 
school superintendents and teachers of 
the future are to be found among 
Christ’s hoys and girls of to-day, and 
their usefulness in years to come will 
depend upon their fidelity in the day 
that now is. 

“Sublimity always is simple; 
Both in sermon and song a child can seize 
on its meaning,’’ 

says Bishop Tegner in the lines which 
Longfellow has translated as “The 
Children of the Lord’s Supper.” 
What a delightful picture is that he 
gives us of the Swedish pastor sur¬ 
rounded by the kneeling boys and 
girls, Christ’s boys and girls, whom he 
had in their infancy consecrated to a 
life of faith and service. How beauti¬ 
ful the day, how sweet the air of spring¬ 
time, how lovely the village church 
dressed for the sacred feast. With de> 
40 




CHRISTS BOYS AND GIRLS 


liglitful simplicity the pastor sets before 
his young charges the great mystery of 
the cross, the precious fact of redemp¬ 
tion, the hope of eternal life. And then 
after their reverent assent to his lov¬ 
ing words they confess their sins and 
offer themselves for the communion. 
“Oh, then it seemed to me as if God with 
the broad eye of midday 
Clearer looked in at the windows; and all 
the trees in the churchyard 
Bowed down their summits of green; 

But in the children there ran (I noted it 
well; I knew it) 

A tremor of holy rapture.” 

May that sweet picture be repeated 
throughout all our land as Christ’s 
boys and girls become at the next 
communion the children of the Lord’s 
Supper; and, as they rise, 

“With heaven in their hearts and their 
faces,” 

may they realize how the Good Shep¬ 
herd takes them under His loving care 
both for time and for eternity. 

41 










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